by Michael Todd
“Of course he’s not available right now,” she muttered to herself. “But I hope he’s giving Madigan some respite between their regular sessions of the horizontal tango.”
Chapter Seventeen
Sal assessed the small group he now held the line with. Most wore the military-issued suits, which made them only slightly better suited for combat than the hybrid design he used. This meant that in the kind of mess that they were in, he was expected to fulfill the responsibility of a gunner.
Two teams were locked in battle against the Zoo. Neither had their specialists with them, so there were already casualties to account for. He needed to show that he was capable of getting this done, no matter what.
At least the mechanism to reload his rifle still worked, he thought with a grin as the beasts massed for another attack. A massive wave of them swept forward. As always, the smaller, weaker animals were pressed into the front and soaked up most of the gunfire. It still fascinated him how these animals were able to coordinate their attacks like that. There were no sacrificial qualities in animals by nature, and even humans seldom easily adapted to the kind of mindset required to sacrifice yourself for what could be called the greater good.
The goop was one hell of a thing.
The beasts continued their surge with no hesitation. The first line of hyenas fell to be replaced by the larger locusts with heavier armor. These were able to soak up one or two rounds before they dropped, and even the self-loading mechanism couldn’t move fast enough. He drew the sidearm from his hip and fired without making sure that the heavy pistol had a round in the chamber before opening fire. He’d finally developed the habit of checking his weapons in advance, he realized with satisfaction as the kick shocked a trail all the way to his shoulder. The pistol fired rounds as large as those in the rifle but from a shorter barrel, which made accuracy more difficult .
Still, in this kind of mayhem, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem to actually hit something. The creatures were less than ten paces away and the tide slowed as something that might be a self-preservation instinct began to kick in. Perhaps there were some limits to what the goop could force the creatures under its spell to do.
That said, sufficient numbers remained to continue the fight and now, the panthers in the branches tried to launch onto the team below. A dozen or so of them growled and roared as they searched for weak spots in the formation to attack.
Kennedy make a quick call and drew a couple of the gunners a few steps back to join her. They picked the creatures off their perches and left it up to Sal and the dozen or so remaining team members to hold the front line. It made sense. It required precision to eliminate the panthers, which meant that they needed their best shots out there. Besides, they could still help to hold the line from the back if need be.
“We need to keep moving!” he called as he once again used his sidearm to cover the second or so it took for his rifle to reload. The rounds punched through the armor of one of the scorpion-tailed locusts. By now, the ground was probably soaked in the red and blue blood of the creatures. For some reason, the fact that there wasn’t enough light in the jungle to enable them to see any colors was extremely annoying. All they had was a combination of motion sensors and night vision, which gave everything a gray-green tint. It was unsettling for anyone who wasn’t used to it. Hell, Sal was used to it, and it still unsettled him.
The line pushed steadily backward but remained intact as Kennedy led them into the jungle and away from the direction most of the monsters came from. A few were still canny enough to try to circle them. This made for a somewhat cumbersome and awkward escape in that they had to maintain a protective perimeter to ensure that nothing could break into their circle. This formation surrounded a couple of the better marksmen who clustered in the center and aimed their rifles at the treetops to preempt the panther attacks but who also kept a watchful eye on the ground battle in case the defenders needed backup.
Sal turned for a second to check their direction, but a second was all that was needed for everything to go to shit. At a powerful tug behind him, he whirled and ducked to avoid a couple of pincers that attached themselves to his pack. He doubted that the animals knew what was inside, but as the pack was torn from his suit, time seemed to slow and almost freeze for a second. The locust dragged it’s bounty away—thankfully, it hadn’t torn it open—and scuttled toward the horde.
“Sal!” Kennedy barked as he broke suddenly from the formation. “Hold the fucking line. Sal!”
A part of him that knew she was right. He had to remain in position to save lives. If he broke the line, it would leave a gap for the creatures to flood into once he was down. No matter what was in his pack, he needed to stay with the team,.
On the other hand, there was a Pita plant in there. If they managed to tear through the containment and released the pheromones that had surely built up inside, things would get bad very quickly.
Besides, he’d gone through too much to get that little plant out of the ground. There was no way that he could leave it behind for the creatures to—well, he wasn’t quite sure it was that they would do. Every time someone who tried to get out plants was found, it was always minus the plants. The question of where the animals took them after killing the humans remained unanswered.
Sal was curious about that but not curious enough. Quite simply, he wanted his plant back.
He waited until his rifle was fully reloaded before he charged. The thirty-five rounds in the mag would take him a long way through the beasts if he rushed in close. The thief was the first to drop and hadn’t quite made it back to the mob. That made it easier to see where his pack was since he was lucky enough that he didn’t have to dig into a pile of angry and hostile animals to find it again. Still, the point remained that if he actually could retrieve the pack, now was the time to do it.
His teeth gritted, he fired into the surging line of creatures that thought they could take advantage of his break from the line. In fairness, it was as much of a weakness as they would get with Kennedy in command. He was aware that she would tear him a new one for doing this but it was still worth it. Or it would be if he actually managed to get to the pack in time.
A panther vaulted down from the trees and landed on Sal’s prize just as his gun clicked empty. With his sidearm currently needed for the creatures behind him, no loaded weapon protected him from the beast. The fangs extended and dripped with venom as a paw lashed out to strike at him. He sidestepped and used the power arm to punch his rifle forward into the animal. It managed to dodge and avoid the strike to the head, but as he thrust forward, the barrel dug into the creature’s ribcage. As a spurt of blood caught on his visor and he swiped at it with his arm.
The new mag loaded and a round chambered, and Sal pulled the trigger. The barrel buried into the panther’s torso and slugs ripped through its body and plowed into the creatures behind it.
His sidearm clicked and showed no new mags available. He flipped it quickly to grip the barrel and tried to shake the corpse off his rifle with his other hand. A hyena darted forward and tried to latch its teeth around his rifle and drag it away. Sal did as Kennedy had taught him and used the sidearm as a hammer to strike the reinforced grip into the creature’s jaw and quickly against the temple. It wasn’t a kill, but as the beast yelped and staggered, his rifle jerked free and the hyena’s head decompressed when a bullet tore through the bone and soft tissue.
Other animals pressed forward and Sal backed away rapidly to snatch his pack from the ground and attach it to his suit. He dropped his pistol in the process but whipped the combat knife from his pocket as one panther after another dropped and blocked his path back to the line that had formed up again and closed the hole he’d left behind.
“Jacobs, if you don’t get your skinny ass back in the line, I will kill you myself,” Kennedy shouted through a comm link. He grinned, avoided a leap from a panther, and turned to use its body as a shield as he plunged his knife deep into the creature’s ribcage.
With his rifle positioned over its back, he drove it forward and fired with quick and sharp single shots at any other beasts that attacked. Some tried to flank him but were quickly gunned down by the men still in the line. The animals seemed thoroughly distracted by his shenanigans, which gave the men some respite and an opportunity to thin the numbers of the animals massed against them.
Sal clenched his teeth. He was committed now and well aware that heading back into the line wasn’t an option anymore, no matter how much Kennedy told him to do it. He gripped his rifle and screamed obscenities. His momentum shoved the panther corpse ahead of him and he continued to use it as a shield as he hurtled into the creatures. They crowded around and eventually dragged him to a halt. The corpse was yanked away and took his knife with it before two panthers hauled him down. The first succumbed to a couple of rounds from the rifle. The second absorbed a bullet but its jaws snapped around the barrel and dragged the weapon from the power armor’s fingers. The creature backed away, but a nearby hyenas landed on his chest to pin him down as their massive jaws locked around his helmet and tried to drag it clear. Something tapped at his legs. One creature tried to tear one off and another simply poked at it—a locust with a tail, he realized, trying to poison him.
Power poured into his arm and it lurched forward into the hyena on his right. Its jaw remained clamped but bones snapped and broke on impact. The beast pulled away and whimpered, the back half of its body non-responsive. The other attacker immobilized his arm with it’s massive weight and bit down on his helmet. A hairline crack appeared on his visor.
Well, so this was how he would go. Fuck.
The hyena suddenly fell away and blood poured over his suit as the creature tried to defend itself against a steady barrage of fire. Sal shoved up to lean on his arm as the line of men and women in suits released another volley of death as they charged. One of the men dropped when something struck him in the neck with enough force to cut through the heavy armor and almost lop his head off. Kennedy stepped quickly into the breach.
“Get off your ass and do something!” she yelled at him through the comms, and he didn’t need much in the way of encouragement. He scrambled to his feet and paused only to pluck his rifle from the jaws of the dead panther before he opened fire and joined the line as best as he could given that he had to avoid being shot himself. He stooped and yanked his combat knife from the corpse and used it to fend off the animals that got too close.
“Jacobs!” his partner called and gestured at something in the trees. Sal looked up and immediately saw one of the massive lizards he was all too familiar with. She made a quick motion with her hands, and he nodded quickly as the beast’s impossibly long tail flashed out again to hammer one of the men in the line and launch him forward. Sal couldn’t tell if he was dead or if the armor had taken most of the damage, and at this point, he didn’t have the time to investigate.
He aimed his rifle at the reptile and waited a second as his suit clicked yet another mag into the slot before he squeezed the trigger. It was set on full auto this time and he focused on a spot on the tree immediately below the creature. It didn’t seem to notice his specific plan, but the tail flickered again and he was barely able to duck in time. He rolled on his shoulder and pushed onto his feet. Kennedy had fired a sustained burst and, in a few seconds, the tree gave way beneath the weight of the beast. It tried to escape, but the limb dropped and gravity pulled it beneath the tree that crashed with a massive thud.
Sal jogged over to the debris and avoided the tail that still lashed dangerously as he peered at the creature’s bloody head.
Executing an animal like this seemed wrong, even cruel, but something with the kind of injuries that he could see wouldn’t live that much longer, even in the Zoo. It was best to simply put it out of its misery.
“Sorry, bub,” he said and and pulled the trigger a few times until the beast finally lay motionless. He studied it to make sure that it wasn’t playing possum and after a few seconds, he turned to find a new target.
The animals, however, had finally beaten a hasty retreat. Whether it was from the falling tree or the death of the largest creature around, he wasn’t sure. The one thing that worried him was the fact that the massive, five- to six-meter tall creature hadn’t made an appearance in the battle, not as far as he’d been able to determine, anyway.
He noticed that the men involved in the fight hadn’t relaxed their defensive position but still took the time to collect the tags of those who had fallen. In addition, others attended to the wounded to ensure that they were well enough to move in as short a time as they could manage.
Kennedy punched him in the shoulder. Hard.
“Ow!” Sal exclaimed. It had hurt, even through his armor.
“If you ever pull bullshit like that again I’ll shoot you myself,” she threatened in mock-fury. “That was some dangerous bullshit and you know it. I won’t save your ass the next time you charge into the very literal teeth of the beast, you hear me?”
He nodded. While he knew she was joking, in all honesty, he was well aware of the fact that what he’d done was incredibly stupid. And no, he didn’t want her to risk her life to save his crazy ass if he tried to pull something like that again.
“It won’t happen again,” he conceded and kept his face as serious as possible.
“Now that’s out of the way,” she continued, her tone lighter as he crouched to collect samples from the creature crushed under the tree, “that was a ballsy stunt you pulled back there. The boys back in the line talked about the Zoo going crazy and that it had rubbed off on you. They even mentioned turning to the Sal-Side before they charged in to help you.”
He grinned. A couple of the men in the group were familiar so it made sense that they remembered him. Knowing that, he was reasonably sure that they hadn’t expected him to go off-the-hook crazy like he had.
“It was instinct,” he explained. “At the time, though, I tried to justify it. I didn’t want a certain container unsealed, but at the same time, I also didn’t want them to take it away.”
Kennedy nodded. “I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t done something similar in the past. More than once. But try and keep the crazy to a minimum, okay?”
“So, you two.” The team leader approached once they had done what they could with the bodies and the wounded. “We still have a couple of days to go in our mission and could definitely use a specialist in here with us. Do you think you could fill in, Jacobs?”
“Can do, Daniels,” Sal said with a grin and patted the man on the shoulder. His partner looked at him askance but after a few seconds, she finally understood. All things considered, they didn’t want to risk walking the Pita plant they still had in their possession out of the Zoo with only the two of them. If they could make a little more cash on the side by helping the teams out, what was the harm?
Chapter Eighteen
Amanda laid out the various condiments for lunch on the table and looked around. She wasn’t sure if Anja would join her, but she’d taken the time to cook steak, baked potatoes, and green beans. It was the only full meal she knew how to cook from scratch, and while it had taken a fair amount of finagling to find steaks that were as fresh as could be acquired around there, she’d set up the perfect time to break it out.
Hell, if Anja didn’t join her, she’d eat the whole damn thing herself and not have a single regret.
She sat and traced her finger over the freshly prepared steak—medium-rare, as she liked it—then looked up as Anja appeared. The petite Russian was dressed in nothing but a tank top and panties and she shuffled and yawned widely as Amanda averted her eyes quickly. The armorer wiped her finger with her napkin rather than lick off the juice as she had planned. That might seem too much like an invitation that she wasn’t sure her companion would appreciate.
“I found something last night,” the hacker said once she’d poured herself some coffee. She studied the food laid out on the table. “Is this for both of us?”
&nb
sp; “Well, I’d offer some to Connie, but she and I aren’t on speaking terms at the moment.” She motioned for the other woman to dig in.
Anja gave her an odd look. Either she was crazy, or Amanda was far too familiar with what was supposed to be a tool to help them with their security.
“What did you find?” Amanda asked as the Russian served a steak and a baked potato onto her plate.
“I found paperwork that might finger the culprits behind the death of Dr. Monroe Sr,” she replied and cut into the steak first and took a quick moment to inspect the pink center before she put it in her mouth. “Fuck, this is good.”
“Thanks.” The armorer laughed. “Something that ties the culprits to his death? Are you sure?”
“Well, not one hundred percent. But there were some shifty businesses deals that were put into place like they knew when he would die. Either they’d sat on that stuff for a long time and waited or they knew when it would happen.”
Amanda nodded and toyed with her food, deep in thought. “Well, we should probably wait until Sal and Madigan get back. If nothing else, they’ll be able to direct you to someone who will be able to tell you more about the situation.”
“Dr. Monroe the younger?” Anja asked.
“Precisely.” She had barely dipped a piece of potato in the gravy when her phone buzzed beside her plate and she scowled as she set her fork down to check the screen. “And speak of the devil. That’s a message from them. They want us to pick them up from the French base. I wonder what the hell kind of a mess they got into that makes it impossible for them to get themselves back.”
“Did they lose the Hammerhead?”
“Nah, the GPS puts it on the other side of the Zoo.” Amanda shoved her phone into her pocket. “It doesn’t seem like they’re in too much of a hurry, though, so we have time to finish our food before we go and pick them up.”